


Five Survivors Who Saved the Commonwealth and One Who Didn't

by sister_dear



Series: How to Thrive in a Radioactive Wasteland [1]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Drabble, Drabble Collection, F/F, F/M, Five Times, Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-06
Updated: 2016-04-06
Packaged: 2018-05-31 13:47:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6472390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sister_dear/pseuds/sister_dear
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The drabbles that kicked off the "How to Thrive in a Radioactive Wasteland" series. (Or, a brief intro to six different sole survivors.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Survivors Who Saved the Commonwealth and One Who Didn't

1.

Natalie spends her first few months in the Commonwealth slowly dying and the next year dealing with the fact that she is going to live. She doesn’t care about these people, the citizens of this Commonwealth; she can’t care. Family always comes first, and she is living on borrowed time. It takes every scrap of energy she can spare to search for her son while her body slowly gives out from under her, but she has to know. She has to make sure he’s all right. 

She makes it, barely, finds her son, finds who he has become, finds the Institute. Finds their medicine. And now she has a choice; follow the son who saved her life, that part of her that has always put family first, or walk away from him for the sake of her morals. 

Her morals have never stood up well to that kind of test. 

She spends several months helping Nick, going after Raider dens with Cait, slowly recovering. She goes back to the Institute once a month, spends a few days there each visit. Gets to know her son, gets to know the people who work with him. She’s in a holding pattern. She’s going to have to make a decision eventually. 

 

2.

Grace is a woman very good at having her cake and making damn sure she gets to eat it, too. She parties her way across the Commonwealth, trailing companions and causes like confetti. She changes her face to suit those around her. Does it without thinking, easy as breathing, knows just what to say and when to say it to make people do what she wants. The Minutemen rise quickly to power, the Railroad stabilizes. Grace dislikes the Brotherhood more and more the more she sees, but she isn’t going to make the same mistake she made at the Institute. She lost her temper at “Father” - refuses to think of him by any other name - and got herself banished, cutting off any possibility of peaceful communication. No chance to influence the Institute’s course, no idea what they were doing, their goals, their firepower. She can’t repeat that mistake with the Brotherhood, and so she keeps them just happy enough. 

When the smoke clears, only the Institute is rubble. 

 

3.

With Nikki it is always the long view, the big picture. Fact: it has almost certainly been more than forty-eight hours since Shaun was kidnapped. Fact: her best chance of finding him is therefore to be as methodical as possible about the search. Fact: it does neither her or her son any good if she finds him but has nowhere to go after. Conclusion: she needs a strong base of allies. People with connections, with strength in numbers, with someplace that could be called home for a newly single mother and her young son. 

By the time she reaches the Institute, the Minutemen are a force to be reckoned with, settlements established all across the Commonwealth, a thriving economy of traders and merchants, a small army whose reach extends from the Castle to the Glowing Sea to Sanctuary. 

 

4.

Lavender takes a good long look at the skeletal husk of her former home and promptly turns the other direction. She follows a radio signal to Cambridge Station before ever setting foot in Diamond City. She comes to a quick understanding with Rhys trading barbed insults, gets off to a rocky start with Danse; he doesn’t like her attitude. She follows orders well enough. 

She doesn’t actually think she’s going to find her son; the world is not and has never been that kind. (She thought that it might, for a time so brief. Husband and baby and picket fences, for God’s sake. She should know by now that hope only makes the losing that much harder.) The Brotherhood are self righteous prigs, but they have the best guns. She avoids Danse when she can, ignores his worried glances when she can’t, goes on long treks with MacCready when the Brotherhood are just too much. And so she burns, a blooming mushroom cloud searing its fury through her soul where once lay love and sorrow, burns and burns until even the anger grows hollow, until room slowly grows for new people, a new home. 

 

5.

Rachel cares for the downtrodden. Always has. It’s the driving force behind four years with the army, the law degree, the reason Nate fell in love with her and the source of their biggest arguments. There are oppressed in the Commonwealth even now, as surely as there were in her time, even if they wear different faces. Helping that first synth reach the safe house does more to soothe her grief than anything else possibly could. 

 

6.

Ada is not here for anyone’s sake but her own. She finds herself in the Combat Zone very quickly, sporting a bloody grin and bloody fists, facing a woman of like mind and like spirit. They agree to hire a third gun, after their lack of range lands them in deep water one time too many. (Ada carries a sword and a pistol; Cait is hopeless at any distance greater than a shotgun can handle.) MacCready fits right in. She tells them both that she is going to find the bastard who took her wife, she is going to kill said bastard, and in the meantime she is going to make as much money as possible. If she is going to live here, then she is going to really Live here, and she has no intention of being miserable. Her plans have no room for helping complete strangers, for a sick son, for a partner dying from too many chems, but plans can adapt, and making a new family - a new wife, new husband, a child - is worth adapting for.

**Author's Note:**

> [Here's screencaps of what the ladies look like, for the curious. ](http://sister-dear.tumblr.com/post/140815647920/all-five-of-my-sole-survivors-to-date-we-have)


End file.
